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That evidently doesn't trouble Ramirez or conservative hate-cow Ann Coulter, the latter of whom has instead attacked triple-amputee Max Cleland in her syndicated column. Because the former senator dared to question the military credentials of a "war president" who cloaks himself in flight gear and battleships, Coulter went on the attack:

"Maybe Max Cleland should stop allowing Democrats to portray him as a war hero who lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam," she wrote, because his wounds occurred while picking up an errant grenade during an airlift instead of battle and, she claims, could have as easily happened to a Guardsman at home. "Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam."

Coulter didn't bother noting that Cleland's luck at limb-loss was heightened by this being the tail-end of the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh, where Captain Cleland had just endured four nonstop days of savage fighting, for which he was awarded the Silver Star for exposing himself to rocket and mortar fire in order to administer first aid to wounded comrades.

That evidently isn't enough to qualify Cleland to question the records of those in the administration who only grew rich off the wars fought by others. Instead she sneers at the "liberals who have suddenly become jock-sniffers for war veterans."

Foul Discharge? While the White House has argued that Bush's honorable discharge from the Guard is proof that he hadn't been AWOL, Harry Shearer noted on his Le Show (on KCRW-FM 89.9 Sundays at 10 a.m.) that accused D.C. sniper and former Guard member John Allen Muhammad had been AWOL, had struck a superior officer, had stolen and had other citations against him, yet he still received an honorable discharge. And Muhammad didn't even have Bush's family connections. You're Supporting Terrorists When You Masturbate! At least you'd think so, given the Bush administration's new push to keep porn out of your grasp, as reported in the Times on Valentine's Day. While the nation's ports remain largely undefended, the Justice Department is adding 51 new employees, including 10 FBI agents, to protect us from naked people pleasuring one another. The senior counsel heading up the election-year porn war is Bruce A. Taylor, who had worked at Justice during those fun Reagan years and previously headed Citizens for Decency Through Law, the organization founded by Charles Keating, who, through his other organization, Lincoln Savings and Loan, had no moral qualms about bilking elderly people out of their life's savings.